Chapter 25 – Claire
TWENTY-FIVE
CLAIRE
Miles stays on top of me for long minutes, both of our breathing evening out before he gently rolls off. His feet quietly hit the floor, and he pads to the bathroom when I hear the sink going.
I lay on his bed, trying to gather the courage to get up as well, trying to not overthink things too much, but he returns before I can. Without a word, he moves to me and then something warm moves between my legs.
A washcloth.
Miles is cleaning me with a warm washcloth after he just fucked me to oblivion. I keep my eyes to the ceiling, trying to rectify this with the version of Miles I know before he’s done, disappearing into the bathroom once more.
Slowly, I sit up, pulling the covers that are haphazardly thrown off the bed up to cover myself as the ceiling fan above us runs slowly, sending a cool breeze along my body, and finally, I take in his room. He’s lived here for years from what he’s told me, but it’s so sparsely decorated, you’d think he just moved in recently. The rest of the house is the same, which is confusing to me since, at the very least, you’d think it would be filled with knickknacks from his grandmother. While there are a handful strewn about, it’s not a house that was lived in for any stretch of time with love and laughter.
Without my permission, my mind starts to move along the walls, putting in photos, furniture, or decorations I think would fit Miles’s personality. I saw a giant old poster of the original map of Seaside Point while thrifting with June recently that, in the right frame, would look stellar over his bed.
Eventually, he reenters the room, a pair of shorts riding low on his hips, no visible underwear to be found. He has my water bottle in hand and a glass of water for himself. My heart skips a beat at the sight. He smiles at me, and the look of it warms me to my core as I sit up.
“I brought you Margo.” I smile at his use of the silly name I gave my water bottle, putting my hands out to grab it because all of that did, in fact, make me thirsty.
Before he gives it to me, though, he gently presses his lips to mine, sweetly, melting me on the spot.
“Thank you,” I whisper as he sets his water on the bedside table and then climbs into bed next to me, tugging and shifting me until his back is to the headboard, my back against his chest, nestled between his legs. Finally, he reaches down, grabbing something from his pocket: a plastic baggie he must have filled with different cereals, handing it to me. He even reaches in, grabbing a few and popping them into his mouth.
“Food and my emotional support water bottle?” I ask with a silly giggle, looking over my shoulder at him. “You give good boyfriend, Miles Miller.” He chokes on the cereal, and I smile. “Oh, hit a nerve, did I?” He coughs once, reaching for his water, and suddenly, my nerves kick up. “We don’t have to—I didn’t mean—I’m not saying—” I start a few different sentences but can’t seem to find the right words to finish a single one because the truth is, I want Miles to be my boyfriend, and the thought that I may have just jumped into this without any kind of thought makes me feel sick.
In the heat of the moment, I told Miles this changes everything, and I meant it: I won’t go back to flirting and teasing that goes nowhere. I’m happy to keep the harmless arguing because I think that could end pretty entertainingly for both of us, but I’m not going back to just friends .
But as seems to be Miles’s way, he puts that fear to rest instantly, setting his water to the side and using a hand on my chin to keep me looking at him over my shoulder. “You said everything changes, and you were right, Claire. I’ve spent far too long pretending you aren’t everything to me, and I’m not going back to that, especially not now that I’ve had you.”
Relief washes through me and with it, emotions. My mind runs over a dozen other examples of how this is turning into something more.
I should be nervous about that, since I was only supposed to be here until September, but I’ve never lived by anyone else’s schedule, much less my own. Maybe this is me finding my place, finding my people.
I fucking love Seaside Point and the people here. I could easily find myself settling into everyday life here.
With Miles.
It's been a long night and a long summer and, honestly, a long year, and all of it rushes over me at the same time, emotions bubbling to the surface.
“Hey,” he says as I sniffle. “Are you crying?” He shifts me in his lap so my head rests on his chest, both of his arms wrapping around me.
“I’m a crier. Get over it.” A blush burns over my cheeks, the tears spilling up as I turn away from him with embarrassment.
“No, no, no,” he says, a hand moving to my chin that I’ve buried into his chest and forcing me to look at him. “I like it.” His thumb brushes over my cheek, swiping away one of the wet tracks.
“You like that I’m a crybaby?”
He smiles at that, the wide, carefree one I like most of all.
“I like everything about you, Claire. But mostly, I like that you don’t hide things, don’t hold them in. You get a feeling, and you feel it. Not many people do that.”
“Like you?”
“Like me,” he agrees softly.
A beat passes, and I lift my hand, resting it on his cheek and looking over his face.
“What are you keeping in, Miles?” I whisper, my thumb brushing over his mustache. I liked it before, but now that I felt it scraping between my legs while he ate me out, I like it even more. I fight the shiver that wants to roll through me because this is not the time.
“I kept how much you affected me in for a while,” he says, and I let out a laugh.
“Sorry to tell you, bud, but you didn’t really do that too well. I knew I affected you, just not that you were totally obsessed with me.” I’m smiling as his eyes go softer.
“The first time I saw you,” he whispers, and my body stills. “The first time I saw you, I knew I wanted you.” I let out a slow breath in an effort to still my heart, but it doesn’t work. “You came with June to some party, and Grant dragged me along because he wanted to make sure she didn’t drink, since she was underage.”
“We totally did,” I confess. “We pregamed before we went, and we got so sick the next day.” I choose not to tell him Deck got us the liquor or that he was our “supplier” every summer until we turned twenty-one.
He smiles and nods. “We know, trust me. But I remember sitting on the beach, and there was this big bonfire. You guys were on the other side, and I heard this ringing laugh—your laugh—and I knew I wanted to find you.”
“It was so loud that night,” I whisper, remembering the music and people talking. It was some kind of rec department event on the beach.
He shrugs, a smile on his lips as a rough thumb moves over the apple of my cheek.
“I’ve always been zeroed in on you, I guess. I spotted you, saw you with June, and tipped my chin to ask Grant who his sister was talking to. He told me it was the infamous Claire, the girl she got into trouble with at school.” I smile wider, loving that my reputation preceded me, even then. “You were so fucking pretty and so happy and so… young . I told myself if you were still around once you were done with school and had some time to figure out what you wanted out of life, I’d shoot my shot. But then…” He doesn’t have to finish his thought, but he does it anyway. “Paul went after you.”
Dread fills my stomach at the thought that I could have been with Miles all this time, that I could have had him, but…
“I’m glad he did.”
“Excuse me?” I ask with a laugh.
“This way…” He uses a hand to push my hair back. “This is the way it was supposed to be. I needed time; you needed time. We needed…the past two months.”
“Of you hating me?”
“Of me coming to terms with how crazy I am for you,” he says, confidently.
“Are you crazy for me, Mr. Miller?”
His thumb moves along my jaw before leaning in.
“Wildly,” he whispers against my lips.
“Who knew you were such a romantic?”
“You know what? I think you did, Claire. I think you knew all along, and you were just waiting for me to catch up. If you didn’t, I don’t think you would have been so patient with me.” I smile up at him, realizing he might just be right. “So what now?”
“What now?” I ask, my heart thumping as I bite my lip because I just had the best sex of my life and I would love to do it again and again, but…
“Well...you called me your boyfriend.”
A blush creeps up on my cheeks at the reminder.
“I was talking figuratively,” I lie. “Because you were doing boyfriend things. But you never asked me to be your girlfriend.”
He looks down at me with a smile. “I’m thirty-one, Claire. I don’t think you do that when you’re thirty-one.”
I raise my eyebrow at him accusingly. “So, what? I’m supposed to just go around assuming I know where we stand just because you’re old? That doesn’t sound very fair.”
He moves his fingers on my side, tickling me and making me giggle. I shift away from him, but he holds me tight.
“Are you saying I have to ask you out?”
“I mean…” Before I can continue, he rolls me over on the bed, hovering over me, hands on either side of my head and a wide grin on his lips.
Fuck, he’s handsome.
Too fucking handsome, especially since he knows I find him to be so.
“Claire Sophia Donovan,” he whispers, and I wonder when he learned my middle name. “Will you be my girlfriend?”
I move a hand up his chest, the coarse hair there tickling at my fingers before I slide them over his shoulders and twine my fingers around his neck.
“Because you’re crazy about me?”
“Because I’m crazy about you, and the idea of everyone not knowing exactly what we are, including you, makes me a bit feral. Because I want you to introduce me to people as your boyfriend, because I want to walk into the Seabreeze by your side and have everyone in this town know you’re mine and to keep their fucking hands off of you.”
“I think I like when you get all possessive,” I admit in a whisper.
He smiles, somehow wider. “Good, because it’s how I always feel about you.” His lips move, kissing my neck, his mustache scraping along the delicate skin. “You haven’t answered me, Claire.”
“What was the question?”
“Will you be my girlfriend?”
My heart skips a beat, and even though I’ve been secretly dying for this for years, I shrug. “I don’t know, you haven’t really given me a compelling argument for why I should say yes.”
“A compelling argument, huh?” he asks, his lips moving to my collarbone.
“Yeah,” I say, breathy now. His lips shift again, moving to my nipple and sucking deep. My back arches off the bed as he does.
“Then let me plead my case.” His lips move down my belly, and he does, in fact, plead his case.
At the end, before we fall asleep after round two, I say yes to being Miles Miller’s girlfriend.